Ghosts in Our Bed
by orangeflavor
Summary: "They will take their time. They will learn to wean the frost from their bones." - Jon and Sansa. She comes to his bed one night and somehow never leaves.


Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.

Author's Note: This was meant to be a short little gift fic for **Dame_of_Many_Names**, and it somehow evolved into... this. A sort of self-challenge where I attempt to cover Jon and Sansa's story from Season 6 to Season 8 but set ENTIRELY IN BED. Yeah, you heard that right. Slight AU. Political Jon is a thing, and because of that and other factors, Jon is not put on some stupid trial for killing Dany at the end of Season 8.

Ghosts in Our Bed

"_They will take their time. They will learn to wean the frost from their bones."_ \- Jon and Sansa. She comes to his bed one night and somehow never leaves.

Castle Black is bleak and cold-stoned and strangely hollow. This is not the North she remembers.

Ramsay's North was not _her_ North, after all, and she thinks this when she grips at Jon's back after slipping beneath his furs.

"Sansa," he protests, voice sleep-muffled and deep, grabbing for her wrist at his waist.

She presses her forehead to the place between his shoulder blades and something like a sob breaks from her lips, cracked and thin.

He stills in the dark beside her.

"Just… for tonight, Jon, please." Nightfall is a terrible, rending thing these days and she misses the warmth of Theon beneath the moonlight since their escape.

(Jon is a different kind of warmth, but warmth all the same, and she thinks maybe this is what brothers are for.)

He hasn't the heart to turn her away, and she knows this, uses this.

Jon sighs, his grip loosening around her wrist. "Just for the night."

She keeps her face at his back, her tears unseen.

They should have known it would never be just for a night.

* * *

"Sansa," he warns the second night, stiffening at her warmth creeping beneath the furs.

She settles easily into the space beside him, tucking herself into his side, a crook of comfort she makes her home.

She doesn't answer him, doesn't move to leave.

He should refuse her, he knows.

(He pretends not to see the wetness dotting her lashes.)

"Sansa," he tries again, one hand going to her shoulder.

"Sleep, Jon," she mumbles into him, fingers gripping at the furs. "Sleep."

Jon takes a deep breath, glances past her to the crevice of moonlight drifting through his closed window.

Her breathing evens out far sooner than his, and he finds his hand still at her shoulder come morning.

* * *

"You don't have nightmares anymore," he says to her one night, watching her profile in half-shadow. It isn't an accusation. It isn't relief either.

(And maybe that's cruel of him.)

The sliver of space between them is a living thing all its own.

"No," she says on a sigh, eyes still closed, hand coming up to brace against his chest like muscle memory. "But you do."

The revelation startles him into breathlessness.

* * *

Jon has stopped chafing beneath the looks his brothers give them when Sansa retires to his room for the night.

(They are not brothers after all, not with the gashes still vibrant and grotesque on his chest, so why should it matter what they think he does with his sister behind closed doors?)

Sansa herself seems immune to their glances, but all the same, something constricts tightly in his chest at the thought, and he finds himself turning fully to her in the night.

She is already facing him, mouth parted in sleep, curled fist beneath her chin. Such a small, fierce thing. Jon reaches for her fingers, unfurls them gently. She groans in her sleep, brows scrunching together in discomfort, but she doesn't bunch her fist again.

Jon pulls his hand away, eyes roving the plane of her open palm, tracing the barely discernible stretch of lines etched into her skin.

He wonders suddenly what that palm might feel like against his bare chest, without the obstruction of his cotton tunic between them.

When he wakes on their last day at Castle Black, he finds her leg pressed between his, her arm flung languidly around his waist, her breath pooling in the column of his throat. Somewhere between their bodies that palm is braced to his chest, and he remembers, all at once, that some scars never fade.

(They will always be his brothers, he realizes – even when he wishes they weren't, even when the reminders of his past life linger beneath the pads of her fine-boned fingers like marks of living weirwood.)

Jon disentangles himself from Sansa and turns his back to her in the filtering light of dawn.

* * *

The cot he keeps in his tent is small and uncomfortable, but while they tour the North in search of support, it is the last thing he considers – until her weight dips beside him, the creak of the cot jarringly loud in the still night.

"We can't. Not here. Not anymore." His eyes flit to the entrance of his tent, the wind tugging threateningly at the flap. Just outside are dozens of Northern soldiers.

"I can't sleep without you anymore, Jon," she says simply, already curling into him, already yawning in her exhaustion.

"Then learn how," he says brusquely, pushing at her shoulder.

She opens her eyes finally. That damn Tully blue.

(His own eyes have always been Stark grey, and sometimes that feels more cruel than kind.)

"I don't want to," she answers hotly, staring at him in the dark.

He releases a huff of breath, his incredulity staining the air.

But she is already closing her eyes once more, already sighing into him.

And he is already letting her.

* * *

"Sixty-two Mormonts," Sansa says, an incredulous laugh escaping her lips as she stares up at the ceiling of the tent.

Jon rubs at the space between his eyes, lying similarly beside her.

Sansa muses quietly, face closing off.

Jon eyes her warily in the dark, nudging her with his shoulder. "Hey."

She sighs, lip caught between her teeth. "They'll be slaughtered, you know. We all will."

Jon sucks a breath through his teeth. "Sansa."

She turns to him suddenly, the loud shift of fabric jarring in the silence blanketing them. "You know that, don't you?" There's something like desperation hanging off the edge of her features, but it's a kind of desperation Jon doesn't recognize. It isn't the kind he knows. It's something sharper, something keener.

She doesn't tell him what Ramsay did to her, and he doesn't think she ever will. But he sees it in the way she pulls her sleeves over her wrists and keeps Brienne always in her peripheral and never sits with her back to a door.

Jon heaves a somber breath, pulling the fallen furs up over her shoulders, his palm smoothing over them when he's done. "We're not done yet. More will come – you said it yourself. The North will answer."

"But would they answer _us_? A bastard son and a traitor daughter?" Her eyes dip down to his chin, unable to keep his gaze. Her breath comes short and shallow, an anger heated through her that Jon is beginning to understand. "Neither of us is Robb."

"No," he answers her truthfully, his hand sliding down from her shoulder to rest between them, caught in a copper curl. "No, neither of us are."

Her brows scrunch together, her gaze still lowered, and it's a strange visage that greets him in the moonlight. This is not his sister, suddenly – not her at all. He remembers silk dresses and haughty laughs and an indifference to him so strong it couldn't even breed dislike between them.

Simply apathy. Simply distance.

But distance is a foreign sensation these days – when her warmth permanently lines his furs and her breath stains the space between them and he knows the feel of her by dark, by faded moonlight.

"They will come," he finds himself saying, a strand of her copper hair pooling beneath the pads of his fingers, like ink in water. "If we call them, they will come."

The truth is, he isn't sure he believes it. Not really.

But he needs her to. He needs her to believe it more than he ever thought possible.

(Her silk dresses have given way to ones of practical wool, her haughty laughs mellowed into mere smirks, her indifference a comfortable mask when they greet the Northern lords throughout their trek.)

Sansa looks at him and he realizes suddenly that he has never been good at faking sincerity. She swallows thickly, nodding to him in mild acknowledgement, and then turning her back to him, tucking the furs beneath her chin. "I understand."

Her hair slips from his grasp. "Sansa – "

"We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow, Jon. You should get some sleep."

He stares at her back, fingers curling into a fist.

Sixty-two Mormonts. A slaughter, perhaps, yes. But he knows no other way.

* * *

"Do you think it will be enough?" Jon asks softly, fingers thrumming uneasily along the furs at her back.

Sansa opens her eyes to stare into the empty space of his tent, her back to him, her hands curled into the furs.

Lord Glover's words still reverberate through her mind.

_House Stark is dead._

Sansa stiffens at the memory, a flush of defiance blooming beneath her skin. And _Rickon, Rickon, Rickon_. It's a drowning murmur sunk deep into her bones. Her grief has already begun, already settled into her like snow stains cloth.

She lays in silence long enough that Jon thinks she is asleep.

His hand releases her hair and curls tentatively around her waist. "I need it to be enough."

Sansa thinks of the hot wax she sealed her letter to Littlefinger with – red and thick and blood-like. She doesn't respond to Jon's touch, voice stalled in her throat.

He nuzzles against the nape of her neck, the scent of his ale-spent breath wafting through the still air, and she wonders if he would touch her like this if he didn't truly expect it to be the last time.

"I can't go back alive, either," he admits to her beneath the cover of exhaustion, hand splaying out over her stomach, an anchor to keep them both – or to drown them.

She catches the whimper behind her clenched teeth before it can taste air.

* * *

It isn't a cot, or a bed, or even a pile of furs they find themselves atop now.

(She'd found him in the kitchens of all places after the battle, after leaving Ramsay to his hounds.

Jon had been leaning back against the table, eyes on the ceiling, hands trembling as they braced against the wood.

"Jon," she'd said, locking the door behind her with a loud _clack_, and it was all that needed saying.)

The stone is cold beneath her back but Jon is warm as he wraps around her, blood-drenched and soiled, his hair plastered to his forehead, the grime ripe on his skin. She wraps her hands tighter around his shoulders, smothers his cries in her breast, drags her cloak about them in a fit of cold.

"I'm sorry, Sansa, I'm so sorry. I didn't… Rickon, he – "

"Hush," she commands, lips planted at his temple. The salt of his sweat is still sweet beneath the dirt. "We're home now."

His fingers dig into the small of her back, his breath rattling from him.

The banners of flayed men are already burning in the courtyard.

Yes – home.

(The crypts have gained another stone statue by the end of day.)

Jon holds her tighter.

* * *

"Jon," she whispers gently, hand reaching for his back. He shuffles the furs higher along his shoulders pointedly. Her hand retracts. A heat suffuses her, ripe and pungent. Her tongue clacks against the roof of her mouth. "I don't regret it."

He keeps his back to her.

She takes a breath. "We won because of the Vale. And the Vale rode for _me_."

"Littlefinger rode for you," he corrects her, his voice muffled and low. Something like anger lines his tone, and it rattles her further. She reaches for his shoulder, tugging him roughly back, forcing him to look at her.

Jon lands exasperated eyes on her, huffing his frustration when she drags his attention back to her.

"What difference does it make?" she hisses.

"It makes _all_ the difference," he near shouts, bolting upright in the bed, looking down at her with dark, aggravated eyes. He snaps his gaze from hers, stares out at the far wall, takes a deep breath, running a hand through his hair roughly.

Sansa stares up at him, still and transfixed. Slowly, she sits up herself, the furs tumbling down her form.

Jon glances just once, just a moment, and maybe it should matter that she's here, in her brother's bed, in nothing but a shift. Maybe it should matter that her skin is flushed and the furs are too warm and the space between their bodies is practically non-existent at this point.

Maybe a lot of things should have mattered – a lot of things that inevitably _didn't_.

But still – still she reaches for him, her hand curling around his wrist tentatively. "Jon."

The breath rakes from him like the last gust of winter. He shakes his head, grinding his teeth, but he doesn't shake her touch from him.

Sansa takes heart, steeling herself. "I would do it again, Jon, if it meant saving you."

Jon looks at her finally, jaw tight, frown deep. "You shouldn't," he says lowly, like a warning.

Sansa blinks at him, her fingers fluttering around his wrist. She tugs his arm toward her. He lets her. She bundles his fist in her lap, fingers wrapping around it tenderly. "Even still – I would." She keeps her gaze on his hand in her lap, her fingers sliding deftly over his knuckles – split raw and red from his beating of Ramsay, the skin a dark, bruising promise between them. "Just like you would," she says on a hush, voice catching in her throat. She looks up at him.

The words lay untouched between them, pillowed in her lap, curled into their own furs, bleeding into the bed beneath them like wronged ghosts.

He has no rebuke. Not to this.

Because she's right. Because he would. Because he _had_.

_If it meant saving you_.

Jon swallows tightly, looks away. He does not pull his hand from her grasp. He looks up at the ceiling, pulls a single, long inhale through his aching lungs, releases it like the unfurling of a fist.

They stay like this for many moments, until Sansa's brows furrow in thought, her eyes latched to his bloody knuckles, her fingers brushing the skin lightly. "It will scar," she says softly, a quiet anguish coloring her words.

Before he can say anything else, she is lifting his hand to her mouth and bracing her lips to his ruined skin.

Jon stares at her, mouth parted, chest heaving.

She pulls away slowly, eyes lifted to his.

Let it scar, he thinks.

_If it meant saving you_.

The words clatter around his skull in recognition.

* * *

"King in the North, hmm?" she asks impishly, smiling up at him, secure in familiar furs.

(He'd been so adamant she take the Lord's chambers. It hardly matters now though, when they're both gracing the bed.)

He scowls, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "It should be yours."

She chucks him beneath his chin. "It should be _ours_," she corrects.

Jon watches her with dark eyes, steady in shadow. "Ours," he repeats, the word foreign on his tongue.

Sansa's hand stills at his chin, her fingers curled just beneath his beard.

She pulls back.

He holds her fast.

He holds her.

* * *

"You're not making this easy," he chuckles into her shoulder, fingers smoothing over her waist like instinct, like he's always shared his sister's bed.

Sansa stops his touch with a firm hand.

He blinks up at her. She wears the same face she had earlier that day, when she'd told him he was good at his, good at ruling.

Jon frowns, wondering how sincere those words were.

"It's not supposed to be easy," she reminds him. Her tone is sharp and unforgiving, and some part of him resents her for taking up the tone she uses in the Hall of Lords when they're here in his bed.

He stares at her, throat tightening, resolve steadying. He presses into her, watching her eyes widen at the move. It's a heady feeling that branches through his lungs.

"Then how is it supposed to be?"

She opens her mouth, parched and silent. She closes it instantly.

Jon shifts beneath the covers, angling himself over her, staring down at her with his arms braced on either side of her head. "How is it supposed to be?" he repeats, time distilled in the space between their lips.

She stares up at him, chest heaving. "Not like this," she manages in a whisper.

And she's right. She's so utterly right it pains him, strikes him with a ferocity he's never experienced before.

_Not like this, _he reminds himself as he leans in, as he braces his lips tentatively against hers.

He tastes the air she sucks between her teeth in surprise.

(Like cloves and snow-soaked oak.)

Jon stills, blinking down at her, his mouth braced just above hers.

Slowly, so slowly he thinks he imagines it, her hands anchor along his hips.

"Not like this," she breathes in admonishment, even as she leans up to kiss him.

Even as he dips down to meet her.

* * *

It seems inevitable, the way their bodies meld together. Like stone and mortar.

"You shouldn't be here," he hisses as she spreads her weight over him, her hair curtaining him in a copper dream.

(It's something he should have said moons ago but now – now it rings faintly hollow.)

She levels her mouth to his, fingers anchored at his shoulder. "Then send me away."

Jon stays deathly still, breathing heavily.

Sansa kisses him.

The sound that leaves him is half-whine, half-groan. His fingers dig into her hips of their own accord. "Sansa." Her name breaks from him in a heady gasp, splashing against her lips.

"Send me away," she repeats, rolling her hips into his meaningfully.

Jon growls, surging up and flipping her over, bracing his weight above hers.

Like stone and mortar. The line of their bodies is seamless. No air.

His hand curls into hers, pressing it further against the pillow at her head, his chest heaving against hers. "You know I won't," he accuses. It's a damnation they share, he thinks, especially when she arches against him in relief.

His mouth finds her throat.

(Like cloves and snow-soaked oak, and this – _this_ – is his downfall.)

For all her cold and stiffness, for all her icy veneer – Sansa is blessedly warm beneath his palms.

Home is Winterfell. Home is stone and mortar, yes, but home is also Sansa.

Inevitable.

* * *

"Don't go," she commands between pants, fingers spreading up his chest to anchor herself atop him.

Jon's fingers curl around her hips like moss molding to stone. "I must," he grinds out, rocking into her, gaze fixed to hers.

She sinks a hand into his hair and tugs, ignoring his surprised grunt, staring down at him with cold-cut eyes. "Don't go," she hisses again, moving quicker.

"Sansa," he tries to reason in his haze.

She dips down to him, staggering their rhythm for a moment when she can't keep his gaze any longer. "Don't go," she snarls, voice cracking, a muffled sob breaking against his sweat-slicked skin. She smothers her quaking 'please' with a bite over his collar bone and he is lost to her.

Later, when he drags her weight up his chest and presses a kiss so hard to her mouth that he can taste the sob behind her lips, her hand slips from the tangle of his hair like a passing season.

She disentangles from his embrace, her hair curtaining away her gaze when she drags her legs over the bed. With her back to him, she is almost his sister once more.

(Almost, but never quite.)

"You'll go," she croaks out in resignation, no question in the words.

Jon raises to his elbows, following the line of her back in candle-fed shadow. "I have to."

Sansa looks up at the ceiling, a dry scoff leaving her. "'Only a king can treat with a queen'," she near spits, repeating his words from earlier that day.

Jon swallows thickly behind her, silent.

"Kings," she muses incredulously, and the image of Robb is instant behind his lids at the word. "Northern fools, all of you," Sansa whispers softly into the night.

Jon reaches for her. "Sansa."

But she is out of reach now, standing swiftly from the bed and grabbing for her cloak on the bedside chair. She leaves him there, still sweating beneath the furs, muscles still bunching beneath the memory of her heat.

Even when he leaves for Dragonstone the next morning and she offers a perfunctory wave from atop the ramparts, her voice trails him like an echo.

_Northern fools, all of you_.

And maybe so, Jon thinks, the taste of her still lingering on his tongue.

Maybe so.

* * *

Sansa spreads a slender arm across the empty space in the sheets beside her, suddenly chill, suddenly hollow.

Even dead, Baelish's whispers follow her to bed.

_Young and unmarried_.

Sansa pulls her arm back, nails dragging across the linens.

He's been gone for just so long.

* * *

Jon does not stay – _cannot_ stay.

Daenerys slumbers nude next to him. But the comfort of sleep has only ever been found in the shape of Sansa's arms and, tainted even as he is now, he will not stain that memory further.

Jon slips from the bed, pulling his breeches over his hips, bile souring the back of his throat. He walks from the room without a last look to the dragon queen behind him, betrayal anchoring like a shadow in his wake.

* * *

"Get out," she seethes, nails digging into her palms when she curls her fists atop her lap.

Jon settles next to her at the edge of the bed. "Sansa, please." He brushes her hair over her shoulder.

The sensation should be familiar. Instead, it's faintly disturbing.

(Had he brushed _her_ hair back so tenderly? That white, treacherous hair?)

"How dare you," she manages through clenched teeth, finally looking at him.

The ruin of his face should be satisfying, but it's only distressing. He looks so worn, so old suddenly, so ragged and somber and eroded with dread.

His knuckles brush over the back of her hand tenderly and she stifles the whimper clawing up her throat, settling for wrath instead – heated and sharp and familiar. "How dare you crawl back to my bed smelling of another woman's musk."

His face hardens then, throat flexing beneath his control. "I don't regret it."

Her scoff hits the air like a howl. "_What?_"

"I would do it again, if it meant saving you." He repeats her words back to her, hand sliding over her bunched fist.

She pulls her touch from him. "That's not fair. That's not fair and you _know it_."

Jon's frown pulls harsher along his lips, tugging deeper. "You told me to be smarter."

"I told you not to go at all," she reminds him, the words like ice – nearly tangible in their bite.

Jon dips his head down, eyes lingering on her still clenched fists. "If it keeps the dead from our door. If it keeps them… from _you_… "

Sansa stares at him heatedly, chest rising and falling so quickly it's making him lightheaded.

Jon swallows back that slice of shame. "I would do it again," he manages, the sickness already lining his throat, already tasting air. His lungs are full of it. This ripe, bitter shame. And even still –

Jon looks at Sansa.

(Her eyes are the bluest he will ever allow them to be and yet he finally understands how some things may be worse than death.)

"Please," she manages through a tight draw of air into her rattling lungs. "Get out."

He stands from the bed, mouth opening as though to say more, but nothing else seems to matter. So he nods his farewell, sweeps from the room with the barest rustle of furs.

Sansa falls to her side along the bed, muffling her sob into the pillow.

She understands, she does. She understands but…

There is a dragon in their den of wolves, and Sansa is left choking on the ash.

* * *

"You have to stop goading her. Stop defying her," he urges, voice firm, slamming the door behind him.

Sansa bolts upright in her bed, legs swinging over the edge, hands fumbling uselessly to clasp her robe closed. "Ex_cuse_ you, Jon, but I haven't given you leave to visit my chambers so leisurely."

He stops just at the edge of her bed, his knees brushing hers. He takes a deep breath. "You used to."

Sansa looks away. "I used to do a lot of things I shouldn't have, it seems."

Something like a growl brews in his chest and it drags her attention back to him instantly. "You're on dangerous ground here, Sansa. Don't provoke her further."

"Your queen planning to flay me, is that it?"

"Sansa!" he bellows, hands gripping at her arms, face inches from hers.

Sansa jerks back, pushing at his chest. "Get _off_ me, Jon."

They struggle for a moment, and then Sansa's leg bucks out against his, stumbling him, and they're falling back along the bed, and Jon is fumbling for her hands, grasping at her wrists as he holds her down. "Sansa. _Sansa_."

"Get _off_," she howls, tears springing to her eyes, tugging uselessly at his firm grasp.

"Sansa." It's a harrowed whisper above her lips, his body quaking with his need. "I'm sorry."

She bucks against him, a strangled sob escaping her throat. "Don't."

He sighs against her mouth, trying to still her, knees bracketing her hips. "I'm so, _so_ sorry."

"It hurts," she blurts out, voice a tremulous gasp of air, eyes squeezing shut. She stills her struggle against him. "It _hurts_, Jon, it hurts_ so much_."

His head dips to her shoulder, breath a hot, tremulous exhale at her throat. "I'm sorry," he repeats, over and over. As though it means anything. As though it matters.

"It hurts," she sobs at his temple, arching up into him.

And then he's kissing her, all heat and snarl and breathlessness, catching her bottom lip between his teeth, gasping into her mouth with all the fervency and desperation her absence has bred in him. His hand leaves her wrist to ruck up her shift, already palming at her thigh, already kneading into her flesh like a lonesome wolf. "I'm sorry," he pants against her lips.

She bunches a fist in his collar. "Shut up." She's already unlacing his breeches when he releases her other wrist, already sliding her knees to brace against his hips.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he mutters into her mouth, breathless and dangerous and needy.

He slips inside her effortlessly. Sansa sucks a sharp breath through her teeth, nails digging into his back.

Jon hisses beneath the sensation, pulling out almost entirely before plunging back in. "I'm sorry," he pants into her skin, a mantra, a prayer.

Sansa tugs at his hair, reveling at the hiss that leaves him, pulling his head up so that her teeth catch at his chin. "I said shut _up_," she growls into his skin, hips rising to meet him.

Jon ruts and ruts and ruts, lost to the rhythm, mindless of their moans reverberating off the stone, mindless of anything beyond the heat of her, the wrathful clench of her fist in his hair, her teeth at his throat, her tongue against his pulse.

She takes him, and takes him, and takes him. And he lets her.

He's taken far too much already.

* * *

She finds him slumbering lightly atop his furs, one arm drawn up over his eyes.

"Jon."

He reacts instantly, shooting up to a sitting position, drawing his legs over the edge of the bed. "Sansa," he says in greeting, uneasy, unsure.

Sansa steps into the space between his legs but keeps her hands at her sides.

Above them, just past the stone of their walls, soldiers stand ready for the Long Night. The dead march on them even now, perhaps hours away, perhaps only minutes, and it's a faint flame that warms Winterfell in the dark night, a bare heat that brings her to his door before he leaves her (perhaps for good this night).

He looks up at her, still – so unbearably still she wants to shake him.

(The dragon queen stands atop their ramparts with hair like winter – a frozen flame unbefitting the still, quiet snow of their home.)

"Tell me it's me," Sansa whispers to him, voice trembling.

Jon's brows furrow together in confusion, his eyes steady on her as she stands before him.

Sansa moves her hands to her shoulders, dragging the fabric of her robe from her shoulders until the material pools at her feet.

Jon's breath hitches, his shoulders stiffening, a bow of tension lancing through him.

"Tell me it's me," she says again, fingers going to the front laces of her shift.

Jon's hands find her hips, fingers splaying up along her sides, thumbs brushing just underneath her breasts before winding back down, his touch reverent, worshipful. "It's always you," he tells her, voice a deep rumble, a ragged exhale between them.

The laces of her shift slide open beneath her delicate fingers. "Tell me it's _us_," she urges, pulling the material down, letting it fall past her shoulders, baring her breasts in the faint candlelight of his room.

Jon sucks a sharp breath through his teeth, one hand already gliding up to cup a breast, fingers firm and greedy, tugging a moan from her lips. His lips part, watching the way her head lolls back.

"Tell me you want me," she demands, fingers reaching for his shoulders, dragging up and along his throat, past his jaw, tangling in his curls.

Jon tugs her to him with a growl, catching her as she stumbles, looking up at her with a faint possessiveness. His fingers dig into the small of her back, and she trembles, lips parting.

"I always want you," he admits to her, his hand gliding slowly down from the small of her back, over the curve of her ass, further still, cupping the back of her thigh, tugging her toward him until she plants a knee along the bed, half in his lap.

Sansa takes a steadying breath, lifting her shift up over her knees to more easily straddle him. "Tell me – "

Jon huffs impatiently, a snarl catching in his throat when he drags her down to his lap, making her stumble as she braces her knees on either side of him along the bed, splaying a hand at her back, his other already digging into her thigh. He pushes his face up into her throat, teeth snagging on the skin and swallowing her pulse back behind his frantic tongue. "You," he breathes into the sweat-slicked column of her throat. "You, you, you, Sansa."

She gasps beneath the lash of his tongue.

"Always you. _Only_ you," he promises, one hand tugging her shift up with impatience, fingers reaching for her smallclothes only to find none. He groans at her jaw, nipping at the skin, mouth searching for hers, desperate, heady, greedy.

She unlaces his breeches with practiced ease and then she's sinking down on him, both of them sighing into each other's mouths, wet and hot and frantic.

"Say my name," she demands, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, keeping him to her chest as she rolls her hips in that achingly familiar urge.

Jon grunts against her lips, tongue darting out to taste her. "Sansa," he pants heatedly, bucking up into her. "Sansa, Sansa, Sansa."

"Again," she insists, breath catching, nails dragging along his shoulder blades.

Jon mouths at her breast, fingers digging into the soft flesh of her hips. "Sansa."

"Again," she gasps. "Again."

"Sansa," he growls into her skin, dragging her up and down his length with a fervency he's never felt before. "Sansa, only you – only, nngh, fuck – _fuck_." His thrusts grow erratic, his teeth catching at her throat, his hands tearing the remainder of her shift from her, her scar-riddled back open to his palms. "Gods, Sansa, only you. Only ever you."

_Sansa, Sansa, Sansa_.

Her name filters through the room like a prayer, like a dark chant, the hordes of the dead coming down around them and yet here – here in this room, in this heat and this yearning and this reckless, need-fraught embrace – here is peace.

Cutting and sharp-tongued and so, _so_ soothing – in only the way wolves can soothe.

"Say my name."

He doesn't.

He howls it.

* * *

Jon doesn't wake for three days. Sansa keeps his side when she can, when the dragon queen isn't fretting insultingly over his war-torn form.

Dawn comes, and so does the relief – slow and blood-stained as it is. The Night King lies in shards of ice across the floor of the godswood.

Jon is just so tired.

He wakes to Sansa's face in the furs at his shoulder, her hand in his, her slumber a lulling hum in the stillness of her chamber.

_Her chamber_, he realizes, eyes glancing around, catching the wide set of the bed.

Sansa stirs to wakefulness beside him.

He reaches for her, catches her bewildered face in his palms and ignores the pain when he leans forward, catching her lips beneath his, soaking her in, tasting the sharp relief of her parted lips and her tentative tongue and drowning in her sigh when it breaks against his eager mouth.

"Sansa," he breathes against her, barely managing to pull from her long enough to meet her tear-filled gaze with his own. "I called for you."

Sansa blinks at him beneath furrowed brows.

In the dead dark, in the hollowness of dreamlessness, he had called for her.

_Say my name_.

And he had. Again and again and again.

Jon smiles up at her, brilliant and blinding and breathless. "You answered," he sighs out in relief, leaning in to kiss her again.

Sansa folds her hands around his own over her cheeks, molding into the kiss like a familiar embrace. Like she'd always known his feel and his taste and the way his breath filled her mouth with the ache of longing.

Like the morning light was made for them.

_Sansa_.

And she'd answered. In dark and dawn.

She'd answered.

* * *

Theon is still burning in the pyre outside when Jon links his arms around Sansa, anchoring her back to his chest, letting her drag the pillow to her face and sob into it unseen.

His body aches, and there are dragons still outside the door, but for now…

For now he will be the stone to her mortar.

* * *

"Daenerys knows?" Sansa asks tentatively, fingers thrumming against his chest in something like comfort.

Jon curls his arm tighter around her waist, eyes dark on hers. "Of my true parents?"

Sansa nods silently. It is all she can do.

Inside, she wants to rage. Rage for that agonized, lonesome boy he used to be. Rage for the cousin she should have had since the beginning.

She loves her father, always will – but lies can cut as sharp as truths, and Sansa knows this intimately. It's carved its lesson into her flesh, made a map of its presence across her winter-pale skin.

And Jon should be able to love their father – _their father_ – without guilt or remorse or resentment lingering beneath the memory of such love.

Yes – inside, Sansa wants to rage, but Jon has seen enough war in this life, and so she will give him peace.

She will _be_ his peace, if he asks it of her.

Jon's gaze flutters to her lips, brows furrowing in thought. He draws smoothing circles at the small of her back. "She knows." The words are clipped, a tight exhale.

Sansa shuffles closer to him beneath the furs. "Jon, she may – "

"Enough," he exhales, shaking his head, fingers stilling at her back. It isn't vehemence that stains his tone, only exhaustion. "I don't… I don't want to speak of her. Not _here_. Not… in our bed."

"We'll have to eventually, you know that."

He shuts his eyes, breathing deeply. "Please, Sansa, just… just give me tonight."

Sansa regards him quietly, keeping her retort along her tongue. Her hand moves up from his chest to trace her fingers along his lips. He sighs beneath her touch, opening his eyes once more. "You have to tell Arya," she says instead, swallowing back the trepidation.

Jon takes a steadying breath, never answering.

Sansa curls into his chest, fingers still at his lips. "Jon."

"I know." It's a ragged exhale that leaves him, and oh, how the war tears at them still.

(Always will, she realizes suddenly.)

"She's your sister," she reminds him, and the words are easier than she expects.

Jon's jaw tenses, his teeth grinding. He watches her in the shadow of her bedroom for a moment, before his hand returns to its motion at her back, fingers dragging along her bare skin. "And you?"

Her response is a curious raise of her brows.

Jon's hand smooths up the expanse of her back, and then languidly back down, trailing the unconscious arch of her spine beneath his touch. "Are you my sister?"

Her mouth parts at the words, chest constricting without warning. "Is that what you want?"

Somehow, she finds herself afraid. More than Joffrey's acidity or Littlefinger's touches or Ramsay's brutality – more than crypts like prisons and dragon queens with the promise of fire in their eyes – Sansa finds she is terrified beyond words.

But then he's pulling her fingers from his lips and pressing his mouth hesitantly to hers, the trembling bow of his kiss lighting the air in her lungs instantly. He pulls away almost too soon, something of trepidation in his eyes. "I haven't wanted that for a long time now. I don't… don't think I ever will again." He stares at her in the dark, waiting for her answer, and she finds she's always known it.

Her arms wind around him and pull him to her, her sigh braced at his neck, her eyes fluttering closed. His hand at her back splays firmly against her, keeping her close. "Thank you," she whispers into his hair, voice cracking.

He chuckles – actually _chuckles_. "For what?"

"For telling me in the first place. For letting me share this with you."

Jon stays silent as he holds her, but she can sense the faint tightening of his arms that signals his worry. She leans back to meet his gaze once more.

"Thank you for trusting me with this part of you." Her hands frame his face tenderly.

Jon's laugh is soft and disbelieving as he shakes his head. "I trust you with _all_ of me, Sansa. Whatever made you think I didn't?"

The breath catches in her throat, mouth parting as though to speak but nothing comes. The tears are hot and instant at the corners of her eyes. She drags him to her and kisses him.

Perhaps she was wrong.

Perhaps they can be _each other's_ peace.

(Perhaps they already are.)

* * *

"If I asked you to stay, would you?"

Jon stares up at the ceiling beside her. "Don't ask me to stay."

Sansa frowns, face quivering. "Would you?" she presses.

Jon links his hand with hers, a calloused thumb running along her trembling knuckles. "She will burn them all, Sansa, you know that."

"Maybe some of them deserve to burn." She knows it's cruel, even as she says it, but she can't fathom the idea of losing him again. The South has never been kind to Starks, King's Landing especially, and this time, there is a dragon queen driving them back to war.

Jon turns to look at her, lips a thin line. "Sansa," he says in admonishment, but something in his gaze tells her he understands.

She tears her eyes from his, looking up at the ceiling again, lip caught between her teeth. "We have to stop her," she admits reluctantly.

He sighs beside her. "We do."

"Why must it be you?" she asks on a quivering breath, hand turning in his until their fingers of interlocked.

"Because I could not ask it of anyone else."

Sansa clenches her teeth, tongue pressing almost painfully to the roof of her mouth. She nods, even as she threatens to break. "I know." Her chest rises and falls with tight, shallow breaths, the fear curling into her lungs like frost. "I know, but it hurts all the same."

"I'll come back to you. I always do." Another brush of his thumb over her knuckles.

Sansa stares quietly at the ceiling for many long moments, throat flexing with her control. And then her eyes slip shut, the sigh dragging from her lips like the scrape of steel against a whetstone. "I won't ask you to stay," she begins, turning to meet his eyes in the faint candlelight of her room. "But then, you have to stop making promises you can't keep."

Jon opens his mouth to answer her but she presses a hand to his lips in a motion of silence.

He stares at her, everything and nothing passing between them.

She keeps his gaze, keeps his hand in hers, keeps her heart to his. "We both know how this ends."

Jon pulls her hand from his mouth, turning to her along the bed. "Sansa – "

"So be with me – _here_ – tonight. Be with me. Be… mine." She takes a breath, keeps it tight to her lungs. "If only for tonight."

His hand slides into her hair like wind through the weirwood branches. Outside, the godswood is glistening beneath new snow – winter has settled seamlessly into the hollows of Winterfell, and Sansa finds she still yearns for summer. For warmth and light and green. For kisses like sun.

"Yours," Jon breathes against her mouth, like a promise he intends to keep. "Always."

Sansa doesn't reprimand him that one.

She likes to think it's the one promise she can always trust.

* * *

Sansa lies awake long into the night.

Arya's knock at her door goes unanswered.

She stares into the flickering light of her bedside candle until the wax melts down to the base, until the light of dawn creeps through her shutters and lights upon her half-empty bed like an accusation.

Sansa rises stiffly, dragging her robe over her shoulders.

Even in his absence, she is still – and always will be – his.

Even when his scent has long since gone from her pillow.

* * *

Jon doesn't realize she's even entered his temporary chambers in the ruined King's Landing until she's wrapping her arms around him and settling along the cot at his back.

He gasps her name into the soot-filled air, stiffening under her embrace.

"I'm here," she whispers into the nape of his neck. "I'm here."

He hadn't returned to her. He hadn't kept his promise.

The realization catches along his throat like ash.

(But she'd come for him – just like she had when they first reunited at Castle Black, just like she had when he woke to her comforting touch after the Long Night. She always comes for him, he realizes suddenly.)

Jon releases a single, lung-scraping sob into the scratchy wool blanket he clutches in his fist. "I killed her," he admits, and the bile at the back of his throat doesn't answer any of his questions or ease any of his pains.

"I know," she answers softly, a delicate hand smoothing back his curls.

"I killed her," he says again, as though it will be easier the more times he says it.

"Because you could not ask it of anyone else," she says into his back, hands tightening over his chest, voice firm.

He tries to turn in her embrace. "Sansa." It's more a choke than any iteration of her name that escapes his chapped lips.

Sansa keeps him to her chest, hands urgent but gentle as they ease him back. "Rest, Jon. You have to rest."

"I'm so tired," he admits, not even realizing the words are ready upon his tongue. It's truth all the same. His bones are weary from war. His hands are permanently creased with blood. And he is just so tired.

"Rest, Jon." She fits her form to his, settles her warmth along his back.

"Why are you here, Sansa?" he asks beneath the weight of unshed tears, body trembling.

She is silent for many moments, long enough that Jon almost eases into sleep without her answer.

But then she's pressing her lips to the back of his neck, her leg moving to cover his, her hands tightening in their hold over his waist. "I've come to take you home."

He doesn't know if the North wants him still, with this Targaryen blood of his, with these kinslayer hands of his, with this stained crown of his.

But Sansa's hands are warm at his chest, and her breath is steady at his back, and this is all he wants, he realizes suddenly – this is all that will ever matter to him again.

Home.

Like stone and mortar. Like the grey expanse of Winterfell beneath snow-heavy clouds. Like copper hair and sharp-tongued retorts and unforgiving looks.

Sansa is a demand all her own. A demand to be forthright, a demand to be constant, a demand to be true. And he will answer her. Until the end of his days, he will answer her.

(When next she asks him to stay, he does.)

They come for each other, after all.

And he will answer.

* * *

Sometimes Jon wakes retching in the middle of the night. Sometimes Sansa grasps for him in the dead of her sleep. Sometimes they linger in the wake of each other's nightmares.

But they linger still. Always.

Peace is a hard-won dawn, but even in winter, the sun always rises.

They will take their time. They will learn to wean the frost from their bones.

"Queen in the North, hmm?" he asks her with a raised brow, hands folding around her waist.

"It should be yours," she offers him, eyes searching.

Jon's mouth parts, words stalling in his throat. And then his disbelieving chuckle lines the air as he draws her closer. "It should be ours," he corrects her, reiterating her words from those many moons ago.

Sansa smiles against his mouth, her hands settling on his shoulders. "It is," she assures him.

Between them, shadows still play their parts, horrors still land their hooks, but more often than not, they sleep through the night. More often than not, they wake to summer.

The ghosts in their bed have long since fled – giving way to the living.

Jon and Sansa greet each day anew, letting the dawn wash over them like a promise.

"_Yours."_

Like a promise _kept_.

They should have known it would never be just for a night.


End file.
